


"just because."

by clickingkeyboards



Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [24]
Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: (mildly), Body insecurity, F/F, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Insecure Hazel Wong, Insecurity, Misunderstanding, Mysteries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-18 12:53:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21561439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: ‘The Case of the Detective-Society President’ begins on Tuesday 1st of September, as Hazel notices Daisy acting... well, strange. As if she cares about her appearance for once.The case only lasts one day.Canon EraWritten for the twenty-forth prompt in the '100 ways to say "I love you"' prompt list by p0ck3tf0x on Tumblr.
Relationships: Daisy Wells & Hazel Wong, Daisy Wells/Hazel Wong
Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [24]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533164
Comments: 1
Kudos: 27





	"just because."

I am writing in one of my small case books that Daisy typically uses for our mysteries that do not involve dead bodies.

This book is a rather pretty deep pink and, inside the front, I have written ‘The Case of the Detective-Society President’.

I suppose I should detail how this entire situation began.

* * *

On Tuesday 1st of September, Daisy was doing something odd: fussing over her appearance.

I thought that she may have gone mad when I woke to her already in front of her mirror, tightly weaving her hair into impeccable French plaits. With astonishment, I clocked what she was doing and gasped. “Daisy!” I yelped involuntarily, causing her to turn.

“Yes, Watson?” she asked, three strands of hair wound around her fingers. “What is it?”

“You’re doing you hair,” came my dumbfounded reply. “As if… as if you actually care.”

With a roll of her eyes, she retorted, “Perhaps I do.”

“Who about?” It was obvious, as obvious as it was with Martia Torerra at the Rue.

“Wouldn’t you like to know.” After a pause, she added, “How do you even know that it’s a ‘who’?”

“Well, why else would you be doing it?” I asked.

With a frosty look, she said, “Just because.”   


* * *

I couldn’t stop noticing it after that. At breakfast, she sat like a lady with her legs crossed over one another, not talking with her mouth full like she always does. When I studied her, she seemed to almost be… posing? Per lips were constantly pursed and she sat as if modelling for some invisible photographer.

“Daisy,” Kitty said at breakfast, “what is up with you today? It’s not as if there is any boys to look at you modelling.”

“She’s practising,” Beanie piped up, looking up from where she was hunched over her ceral, so used to being small. “Maybe she likes  _ George _ what’s-his-name.”

“Mook-her-gee?” Lavinia asked, her low voice ripping across the table to me.

Daisy chuckled at the botched pronunciation while I replied, “No, it’s Muk-her-jee.” My small Hong Kong accent emerges more when I am pronouncing Asian words, and for some reason it makes Daisy perk up.

“What did you say, Watson?”

“What do you mean?” I asked, brushing my loose hair back over my shoulder. Deepdean has relaxed on the rules of hair recently and I have taken to having it down, as I despise having my hair yanked back by hair ties and hairpins.

With her usual analytical detective Look, she said, “Say George’s name, will you?”

“George Mukherjee,” I said, noticing how my accent really emerges on the first syllable of his surname.

She said nothing more after that, only smiling at me and turning back to her meal.

* * *

In history, where I am right now, I wrote up all the above when something else happened. Or rather, a series of things that had the entire of the Fifth Form reeling.

Miss Lappet was quizzing us on the key dates of the Russian revolution, which descended the country into the state it is in nowadays.

Despite her persona of being rather hopeless in lessons, mixing up Stalin and Lenin, confusing Columbus (who I still quite dislike) with William the Conquerer, forgetting the difference between metaphors and similes, mixing up Romeo and Mr Darcy, hopping tenses like anything in Latin, and messing up absolutely ever gender in French.

Not today.

“What was the first event on the timeline of the Russian revolu—”

Before she had finished her sentence, Daisy’s hand shot up and she said, “In 1887 on the eighth of May, Lenin's brother, Alexander Ulyanov, was hanged for plotting to kill Tsar Alexander III.”

Miss Lappet blinked as if struck. “Great Heavens, Daisy. What on earth has happened to you?”

With a — rather pretty — pink blush, she replied, “Oh, it’s nothing, Miss. This topic seems to have particularly stuck in my mind, is all. Don’t get your hopes up.”

That happened no less than ten times after that, and each time Daisy would look to me. Seeking… something.

Perhaps my reaction to her choosing to speak up.

Perhaps to see if I had figured out whatever she was doing (I hadn’t).

Perhaps looking for my response to her being a genius in a topic I’m having difficulty with. 

She cannot be doing what it seems she is.

Looking for… approval.

“On the fourteenth of way 1896, Nicholas II was crowned Tsar.”

“Between July the seventeenth and August the tenth, the RSDLP split into the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks.”

“Bloody Sunday was protest that led to the imperial forces firing into the crowds and it began to 1905 revolution.”

“On October the seventeenth, the October Manifesto, issued by Tsar Nicholas II, brought an end to the 1905 Russian Revolution by promising civil liberties and an elected parliament called a Duma.”

“Lenin arrives in Petrograd on a sealed train on April the third.”

“Alexander Kerensky became Prime Minister of the Provisional Government on July the eleventh.”

“The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, between Germany and Russia, took Russia out of The Great War.”

“The Bolshevik Party changed its name to the Communist Party.”

“The capital of Russia was moved from St. Petersburg to Moscow on the eleventh of March.”

“Lenin died on the twenty-first and was succeeded by Stalin.”

_ What was going on? _

* * *

I am afraid that this mystery will be rather shorter than I anticipated and can hardly be counted as a mystery, for that matter.

You see, while everyone else was at Socs., Daisy and I were in the dorm, beside each other on my bed.

“Hazel,” Daisy began, rather uncomfortable. “Can you… not interrupt me?”

Curious, I nodded.

“You see— well— I like somebody. As I liked Martia at the Rue, I  _ like _ somebody. I am utterly in love, head over heels trying to impress a girl who is as normal and anything. I’m absolutely drowning in daydreams, my fluttering heart, my pounding breath, my… my  _ odd _ thoughts. Things I never imagined I would ever think about anybody doing to me. I wake up in a cold sweat because, even if it is a truly all right way to be, the thoughts are utterly strange and still very wrong.”

I sat forward, my heart and hope sinking into my shoes.  _ Daisy was in love _ . Somebody she totally adored, had  _ those _ thoughts about, and was incredibly — unbelievably — in love with. Somebody she wants to be with.

This girl must be a beautiful, genius, intelligent, witty, blonde, brave, heroic, picture-perfect English girl.

This girl is not me.

“Who is it?” I breathed, a tearful hitch on my voice.

“I told you to not in— oh! You fearful beast, Hazel!” she shrieked, lunging forward and clamping her hands wither side of my face. She swung one leg over me so she sat across my lap, but my knees. “Idiot.”

That one was said much quieter, softer, kinder.

Then she leans in, quite aggressively, and crushed her lips onto mine.

It almost hurts and for a moment I do not see the appeal. It is only when Daisy relaxed her kiss and I was in heaven. It was slow, soft,  _ heavenly _ .

“That—” I started, rather breathlessly, “I say!”

“Nothing else to say, Watson?”

I was breathing hard, obviously red in the face and panting rather unattractively.

Daisy was staring at me as if I was made of diamonds.

As if I was pale, not awkwardly Chinese-skinned.

As if I was clear-skinned, not spotty and oily.

As if I was blonde with beautiful curls, not with straight dark hair that is stubbornly not glossy.

As if I was tall, skinny, and sporty, not short, plump, and breathless from the moment I pick up a hockey stick.

As I was  _ English _ , not Chinese. 

“You’re looking awfully down,” Daisy said, still sat almost in my lap. “What’s wrong, Hazel?”

A little choked up, I blurted, “You’re looking at me as if I’m English.”

“No!” She took my face in her hands and stared into my eyes, not allowing me to look away. “I’m looking at you like you’re  _ Hazel _ . You’re the person I like, I would not look at any English girl the way I look at you. I want to impress you, be pretty for you, kiss you, love you, be  _ with _ you, be detectives with you, be by your side. I like  _ you _ , Hazel. I love your hair…” She kissed the top of my head. “I love your skin…” She kissed my forehead. “I love your eyes…” She kissed each eyelid. “I love your body…” She kisses my shoulder. “And I love your lips.”

She kisses my lips, harder than the second kiss but not as forceful as the first.

“I love you too, Daisy,” I manage, my voice a little shaky.

“No!” she says, looking cross. My heart rockets again, nervous beyond belief. ‘No’? What did she mean? I couldn’t love her? She didn’t love me? “I didn’t say it properly yet, and we absolutely must do all this right because I am not planning to do this all over again with anybody else.”

She wraps her arms tight around my middle, resting her head on the top of mine. “I love you, Hazel Wong.”


End file.
